Thoughts on the game

Coaching:Coaching helped put us down by 10 points at the beginning. We helped the Lions get momentum right from the start by giving them the ball on the onside kick in good position instead of making them have to drive the ball down the field to score. The other play that killed us was the special teams return for 105 yards it may have been more on the players for that one but coaching still needs to take some responsibility for personnel and blown plays like that. We basically gave Detroit their first 10 points and from there on they had confidence and we were playing from behind. Typically when we are behind we dont take as many chances on D with schemes and it seemed that way today. The D got no pressure and the offense did not seem to go down field enough. Part of not going down the field may have been there was no Clayton and no one they felt comfortable going deep with even against a week secondary of Detroits.

Special Teams:Bad call to go for an onside kick and spot them three points to start off the game. We were lucky it was only three points. Poor coverage on the 105 yard kickoff return. We need to get much better at returning the ball on kick offs we don’t get any big gains on kickoff returns. Gilyard four returns averaging 5 yards per return. Toston four returns averaging 4.5 yards per return.

Offense:Bradford was missing some passes it seems like he has regressed in accuracy the last few weeks. The loss of our #1 WR also hurt the passing game. Bradford was very comfortable with Clayton but has not really had much of a connection with anyone else other then Amendola. Amendola possibly cost us an early seven points by fumbling at the five yard line. Without Amendola though this game could have possibly been even uglier because he had 12 receptions which was more then the total of the other seven WR’s Bradford hooked up with. With Clayton now out we are down to Danny Amendola as our #1 WR. We have no one else that Bradford seems to feel comfortable with IMO. I stated before the game we needed to look into Devin Thomas he is a big fast WR we have nothing to lose and everything to gain. He could have at the very least helped the poor Special Teams return I discussed above.

Defense:We had 0 sacks and C. Long was non-existent the entire day I did not remember hearing his name once. Long had only 1 tackle late in the game and I remember thinking before that I had not heard his name called at all. The Detroit QB had no pressure at all on him. Perhaps part of the reason for that was falling behind in the game early. When we are behind we seem to do less fancy blitz packages. The DB’s didn’t have a great day Bartell has to get that INT. The DB’s were not helped by the QB getting comfortable in the pocket and waiting for something to open up. They had five different players with four receptions each. Four of those guys are rather big targets Burleson 6’0 200, Johnson 6’5 240, Scheffler 6’5 255, and Pettigrew 6’5 265. When big guys like them have time to get open its bound to be a bad result. They have a very good WR and TE we had to apply pressure today to beat them and we didn’t.